James Wilkie from Sono-Electro in conversation

Jude Montague talks to James Wilkie about his work and personal involvement with the Sono-Electro Festival and what we can expect this year.

What led you to the concept Sono-Electro?
Moving to St Leonards-on-Sea where there is space to think, dream, and the chance to make. I’ve met and been supported by incredible people here. I met Colin Booth, manager at Electro Studios, and Sound Artist, Jilliene Sellner: I was looking for space to avoid working from home and Colin asked what kind of show would I put on if I had the space for a week? I wondered what would happen if I thought about composing with people and space instead of sounds to do what I wanted to do with my work. This second edition has included a wider team of Lucia Scazzocchio, who has co-curated and partnered with me in producing a successful Arts Council bid for the festival, along with James Weaver, known for Sonics Hastings, and again Electro Studios. This edition has become about giving space for new stories (XMTR festival) to grow and existing ones (Sonics Hastings) to reflect and think forward. It’s a festival dedicated to sound art, inviting artists and audiences alike to examine their relationship with place through hyper-local interventions that touch on broader global environmental narratives.

Tell me about your own background in audio / experimental sound
I’ve gone from playing guitar in a Boston Noise/Rock band playing the Hard Rock for Halloween to an ambient music designer for Hollywood Soundtracks, a nerdy Goldsmiths laptop sound artist, to residencies and performances in the UK. My practice now includes working for Sensory Experiences Labs, and a long term collaboration with Lisa Chang Lee. Lisa and I are now producing works supported by the ZSL around her visits and research to the Hainan Tropical Rainforest to explore the indigenous Li community and their aural connection to the forest – theirs is an Intangible Heritage protected by UNESCO: The Li hold only an aural tradition of their stories and histories as well as a strained narrative in the region with China.

Are there any sound making elemental themes that are emerging this year from the festival?
Belonging, ownership, family, and relationships. Many of the artists are life partners – and the first set of artists in Residence is a family! The sea features widely in the minds of the closing artists on the Sundays; I am certain it will have an impact on the artists in residence’s output as well. Music and the festival itself is a means for finding a perspective from which we can all live and thrive together here.

Any comments on the local experimental sound-art scene?
There are extraordinary artists down here by the sea and I am hoping to continue to connect and to showcase them with Sono-Electro. An important aspect of the festival is to make a home for all the great things we already have down here.

How does radio and broadcast intersect with the festival – this is one of the anniversary years when John Logie Baird was experimenting with television here in the town?
Sono-Electro’s logo as it happens is a radio beacon, and Lucia’s XMTR Audio Art Festival will guest curate a full day for Sono-Electro on the SAT 28th September, is all about storytelling and the art of broadcasting. Live broadcasting stream / Resonance FM has generously lent its support to showcase festival highlights in October.

Do you have any thoughts about sound as it relates to vision – including as a side effect of vision – John Logie Baird noticed when he transmitted video it had a side effect of sound that related to the vision?
The McGurk effect! The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound.

Any thoughts on electricity and sound?
This brings Voltage Control to mind: Modular synthesis, and the floodgates for human based control over sound. Speakers…

What is your vision for the intersection of visual arts and sound?
Sound serves at the mercy of “vision” and my practice strives to push the relationship the other way around – one must “see it to believe it”: If vision casts a light to clarify, then sound casts a shadow, and shadows leave more to the imagination, which is pretty important these days.
   
… and your vision for sonic arts and communication?
Is less about what is being said and more about how we listen. Sonic Arts is to me about revealing one’s perception and attention and finding new ones: a sound doesn’t change, but you can.

I’d like to respond to this one with a quote for context from Jill Bolte Taylor:” — ‘Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.’ The festival is about understanding participants this way: making people feel which causes them to think. Perhaps something new, perhaps something they’ve meant to give time to – importantly, thinking about things in new ways.

Sound is pretty good at doing this which is what I love about it.

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